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Presidents have little influence over the quality of most services provided by California’s governments. For example, public school kids in California have long been poorly served regardless of who has sat in the Oval Office and it’s not presidents who drain funds from UC and CSU to overcompensate prison staff.

Whoever wins today’s elections will need to govern. While some elected officials will continue to talk about fighting or resisting, others will be ready to roll up their sleeves and to work across aisles. To succeed, they will need the protection of political philanthropists.

As we reported last month, if you’re an LA voter in search of guidance, we recommend the LA Voter Guide from Thrive LA, which is a fast-growing political philanthropy that we also recommend for your financial support.

We’re always evaluating elected officials and in California no one impresses us more than San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who leads the Yes on 36 campaign to reform Proposition 47.

Last year I wrote about GFC’s most expensive failure, which is our continuing lack of success in reforming the public-employee retirement system, and earlier this week CalMatters columnist Dan Walters wrote about what I consider to be collectively our most shameful failure, which was the prolonged shutdown of California’s public schools during the pandemic.

When GFC launched in 2011, Republicans held enough seats in the California Legislature that occasionally they could exercise some leverage by joining with pragmatic Democrats to bridge some gaps.

Last month we wrote you about Friends of the University, a muscular addition to California’s political philanthropy ecosystem that advocates for the University of California, which for far too long has been treated like a doormat by elected state officials.

A number of GFC’ers have asked what traits we seek in the next governor. In short, if the next governor is a Democrat, we would like someone like Gina Raimondo when she served as governor of Rhode Island. If a Republican, we’d like someone like Mitt Romney when he served as governor of Massachusetts.

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the California Legislature’s passage of SB 400, a retroactive pension increase for public employees that constituted the largest single issuance of public debt in California history.

Because a number of GFCers have asked how I’ll be voting on state ballot measures this year, I thought it would be easiest to create a post that you can disregard if not interested.